


Sovereignty

by Anastasia_G



Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 08:30:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7260181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anastasia_G/pseuds/Anastasia_G
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"To enter in these bonds, is to be free;<br/>Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be." - John Donne.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sovereignty

When first the Queen of England bids her comb her hair, Lola is outraged. She might be a prisoner, but she was no servant. 

 

_ What am I then? _

 

She does not ask, only fixes her mouth politely and takes the proffered silver brush. Elizabeth unwinds her hair, and a river of fire spills into Lola’s palms. It’s almost obscene, how red and silken the Queen’s hair is. One stroke of the brush, then two, then three. Anger shakes in her wrist. 

 

Elizabeth stops her with a touch both soft and terrifying.  _ Like everything else at her court _ .  

 

“Are you angry with me, Lady Lola?”

 

“No, no of course not. Shall I continue?”

 

“You should be delighted,” Elizabeth says, silkily, “that I grant you such proximity. Why, you could slit my throat and I would be helpless.”

 

The brush clatters to the floor. Lola stands, too furious to pretend any different. 

 

“Ah, I have offended you,” the Queen notes.

 

“Is that what you think I am, a common murderer waiting for the right moment?”   
  
“My dear Lola, there is  _ nothing _ common about you.”

 

Lola hates that tone, it reminds her too closely of a different, masculine voice that had also praised her, had kissed her roughly in a dark hallway. Somehow, Elizabeth’s designs on her frighten her more than Nacrisse’s ever did. His, she could predict, could even understand. But the Queen of England was a mystery too deep, a force too great, for even Narcisse to compare.

 

“I - I would like to return to my chambers, if it would please your majesty.”

 

In a sweep of silk and fire, Elizabeth towers over her. The queen’s hand approaches but falls away from Lola’s dark curls. The flash of something imperious and demanding lights those green eyes, and Lola remembers the tales she’s heard of the Tudors and their madness.

 

Thankfully, Elizabeth relents. 

 

“Go then. You may resume your duties tomorrow.”

 

For now.

 

***

Lola does not want her dead, not really. She is too afraid to conjure that image. But sometimes she imagines wrapping that fire-silk hair around that white, white throat. Not killing her, you understand. Just, bringing her that much closer to honesty.

 

(What kind of noises would she make in her strangling? Would she say her name?)

 

_ Lola _

 

_ *** _

Mary is dead. 

 

Her tears ache for release but Lola cannot weep. She is a rock in the sea, and salt has made her hard. She longs for the sweet young girl who followed her queen to France. Some nights she almost hates Mary, for the way she commands love against all odds. Others, she thinks about Conde and how love cut him open.

 

Elizabeth does not call on her.

 

Lola hates that too.

 

_ The Queen of England is as cold and unforgiving as her country’s clime,  _ she tells herself.

 

She tries not to think of red hair melting in her palm. Blood and silk and the promise of safety.

 

Lola does not sleep.

  
  


***

 

When first the Queen of England offers to comb her hair, Lola is stunned. 

 

“Please, Lady Lola. It would bring me joy to tend you as you once did to me.”

 

Lola is grateful for the semblance of equanimity. 

 

_ As if I could refuse a Queen. _

 

And so she sits on her settee while a monarch more powerful than one she has ever served before unbinds her hair from its barrettes, laying dark curls tenderly across her shoulders.

 

Elizabeth’s touch is gentle if unpracticed. She speaks about Scotland, and the vacuum of power at its throne. She wants to install herself as Queen there, to ward off John Knox’s growing power. 

 

It all makes sense, on the surface.

 

“Is that all you wish, my lady?” Lola asks, noticing how the brush stroke falters.

 

Elizabeth sets down the brush. Now, there is nothing between her bare hands and the Scotswoman’s hair. Lola feels helpless and yet, strangely, safe. Because Elizabeth has wrung from her the belief that she will protect her. She had demanded, and in the end Lola had given, her trust.

 

“I have never been to Scotland,” the queen murmurs, brushing Lola’s hair with her fingers, “I’ve heard tales of its wild beauty of course, but I have never breathed that air or stood under its sky.... I suppose you must long to return there.”

 

“I...I do not know what I long for.”

 

It was the truth, bitter and ghostly as it might be. She could not remember the love she once felt for Narcisse. Scotland was a dream, and Mary...Mary with her brave mouth and headstrong notions was gone, swallowed in the sea. Her queen is dead while she, Lola, is alive. 

 

Alive and with another queen’s hands in her undone hair.   
  
“Even though I have never seen your country, sometimes...,” Elizabeth plunges her fingers deeper into the thick tousle of Lola’s curls, “...sometimes I can picture it so clearly, as though I have already known its hills and dales, its rivers and meadows. Do you understand, Lady Lola?”

 

Lola keeps her voice light, unafraid, “There are very few meadows in Scotland, I’m afraid. Forests and mountains yes, but nothing like the flowering meads you have here.”

 

“I can see these forests you speak of,” the queen’s breath brushes her neck, makes her scalp tingle, “dark as your hair. I would become lost in those shadows, even as I tried to master them.”

 

“Is mastery the only approach you can imagine, your majesty?”

 

Elizabeth laughs, moves her lips to Lola’s ear, “Would Scotland yield to me willingly then?”

 

What is there to do but yield to a queen with fire in her hair and steel in her eyes? And yet, Lola feels twisted with shame, as though she has betrayed her countrymen in some deeply intimate way.

 

Still, she cannot move, cannot reject the English queen’s touch. She has always followed in the wake of queens, bequeathed her life to their needs. Mary was dead, and yet the world was unchanged.

 

“Would you protect her - Scotland -  as a queen should?”

 

She waits, breathless, for the queen’s reply.

 

Elizabeth does not kiss her throat, but her lips linger there, promising. Always promising.

 

“Only if you instruct me, Lady Lola, on a queen’s duties.”

  
  
  



End file.
